Screams
by fringeperson
Summary: Kids in costumes going out to ask their neighbours "Trick or Treat!" isn't how this holiday goes in every town you know, and it sure didn't start out that way. All Hallows Eve has a darker history. don't own, one-shot, rated for creepy-ness


There are places in the world where All Hallows Eve is a time to bolt the windows, lock the doors, and cower under the covers (note: _not_ under the bed. _Definitely_ not under the bed) while praying that when (_if!_) the sun came through your window the next morning that you would still be one-hundred-percent alive, retaining all of your body parts in their correct places, and most certainly _without_ undesirable extras that hadn't been there the night before. Nibelheim was one of these places.

Nibel wolves actively prowled the small mountain settlement on All Hallows Eve. It was the only time they passed through, and even then they only came once twilight had settled in, taking over the sky in place of the sunset. However, it was not the terrifying wolves, powerful and deadly as they were, that sent the entirety of the small population into this trembling fit of barricading themselves within their sturdy little homes built from stone and the most resilient of trees. At least, not exclusively.

No; it was the screams that set everybody pulling their blankets over their heads as they prayed to whatever gods would hear them.

A little over two decades ago, when the reactor was new Nibelheim was being built, screams had echoed off the faces of the mountains either side of the (then new) settlement. The place shouldn't have restless spirits, as no one had died there that anyone was aware of, and the screams that were being heard were _definitely_ not made by one living. At least, everybody hoped not.

The sounds were terrifying, soul-wrenching, pitiable and painful. It sounded like heartbreak, the breaking of the soul, the _ultimate_ suffering... and it repeated every night from a month after the reactor was being built until the night of All Hallows Eve – exactly a year after it had begun. Since then, the screams had come only on that night, and since then, speculation was always rife the next morning (though always spoken in shaky whispers, for the speculators were still very much shaken by the screaming themselves) on who might be screaming... and why.

Speculations based on rumours from when the reactor was new and a man from the ShinRa Science Department had occupied the mansion. Rumours that had been based on conversations overheard between laboratory assistants. That the Turk assigned to the area while the reactor was being built had mysteriously disappeared before receiving orders out had been added into the rumours, and then the speculation, as well. There was one thing no one needed to speculate on though – they had all figured out where the screaming _came from_: the ShinRa Mansion.

Deep within the bowels of said structure, behind disguised doors and beyond hidden passageways, semi-buried and half-alive at best, a single figure lay in the darkness no one dared to penetrate. If anybody had, then the people of Nibelheim would have found that all of the nightmares they prayed against every year on that same eve were not as fanciful as they had hoped.

The figure's name was Vincent Valentine, and he was the Turk that had 'disappeared' those decades ago, though one would not think it to look at him. The changes wrought in his physical appearance were scientifically engineered and painfully applied by novice 'experts', rather than the natural kinds that were carved in gently by the experience hand of Time.

One does not have a _growth spurt_ when one is twenty-eight years old. _Those_ sorts of uncomfortable changes are generally and gratefully regarded as over by eighteen, a full decade earlier. A gauntlet of gold-coloured steel should not be responding to commands when there was no real hand inside it either, and it should not _heal_ when it gets scratched or dented. Yet these were mere appearances, only the outside of him, the shell that housed what had once been his soul.

The shell that now held fractured pieces of soul. Some his, certainly, but also some that were not.

"Host," purred a dark voice within the mind of Vincent Valentine. The voice was sin itself. It was greed and fury and lust; it was gluttony and sloth and apathy; it was pride and envy and narcissism. It was fallen and it was...

"What do you want Chaos?" Vincent answered it with a frown.

Of all the demons that had been forced into him, that had been subjected to having _their_ souls wrenched at and stitched to his, Chaos was the only passably sane one. Galien Beast was too much of an animal to have a consciousness that could be classified as either sane or insane; it was always simply animal, simply predator. Death Gigas was a creature of mindless violence, and Hell Masker was only just above _mindless_ because it liked to recite macabre poetry as it turned people into artistic stains of blood and gore. Chaos, on the other hand, could hold intelligent conversations with him. This was _not_ really a good thing.

In response to Vincent's question, Chaos chuckled darkly, and his laughter that was the lure of Asmodeus.

"I want _you_, Host, and I want you to _enjoy_ All Hallows Eve with me," Chaos purred, and Asmodeus was forgotten in favour of Amon. An unkind change, but not an unexpected one.

Vincent stiffened slightly within his coffin. Chaos was a creature of Gaia, and it knew the passing of the seasons intuitively. Vincent had no such way of tracking the time of year.

"No," he breathed hoarsely. "Not again."

Chaos insisted on 'celebrating' the anniversary of the day that they had been merged together and Hojo had finished with 'Project V' – and Vincent could not escape the creature that was so trapped within him that it had taken to stitching pieces of Vincent's own soul back together in deliberately incorrect ways simply to pass the time. It was because of Chaos that Vincent screamed one night every year as he had once screamed every night under the direction of Hojo Beezlebub's grasping, latex-covered fingers.

It was more than just because of their 'anniversary' though, Vincent knew. After all, it was on the night of All Hallows Eve that the legions of Hell had free reign to come out and play among the unwary mortals. While no longer mortal or unwary, that did not mean that the denizens of the underworld would not take this night to so freely taunt and torture him.


End file.
